THE lingering human cost of the war in Iraq provides the familiar focus of The Messenger, a doleful drama from screenwriter turned director Oren Moverman.

Ben Foster gives one of his best performances as Staff
Sergeant Will Montgomery, an injured veteran assigned to the Army’s
Casualty Notification service under Captain Tony Stone (Woody
Harrelson). He will share the responsibility of breaking bad news to
loved ones and absorbing their anger, grief and despair.

Along the way,
he meets the recently widowed Olivia (Samantha Morton) and begins to
bond with his superior officer. There are no great surprises in the
story, just an old-fashioned character study that evokes the muscularity
of Norman Mailer’s writing or memories of the 1970s Jack Nicholson film
The Last Detail.

Foster and an Oscar-nominated Harrelson effectively
convey the outward steel and inner fragility of these men of war but the
film is slow-moving and maudlin.